Page 41 of A Tower of Half-Truths

Twenty-Five

“This can’t be everything,” Mavery said.

Tristan, the arcanist on duty, had taken her to a corner of the University of Leyport’s library that received few visitors, judging by the thick dust and cobwebs.

The Sensing “section” comprised a single shelf, and from her thorough cataloging of Alain’s library, she already knew many of these titles.

“You’re telling me, out of a hundred thousand books, these are the only ones about Sensing?”

“I’m afraid so, Ms. Culwich,” Tristan said. He was a lanky man with shoulder-length hair that had gone completely white. His clean-shaven face was a rare sight among the men on campus. “These are the only books on arcane hypersensitivity that have been deemed fit for scholarly research.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that was supposed to imply.

“Do you have any books by Enodus the Second?” she asked. “And Deventhal the…sorry, I can’t remember which number he was. Whoever was the most recent—and a Senser.”

“I can find that out easily enough.” Tristan jotted down something in his notebook. “I should return within half an hour, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“That’s fine.” If it came down to it, she would spend the whole day here.

After Tristan stepped away, she pulled the unfamiliar books from the shelf, then carried them to the bench in front of the nearby window.

Several stories below, people lounged about on the verdant quad as they took advantage of the warm afternoon.

Most of them appeared to be students, though Mavery spotted the occasional black robe hurrying between the towers.

Part of her yearned to be out there, rather than in the dustiest corner of the library, but she had work to do.

She turned her attention to the book on the top of her stack. Its spine emitted a worrying crack as she opened it, and a cloud of dust particles danced in the beams of sunlight. Coughing, she began reading the introduction.

The first occurrence of arcane hypersensitivity is widely disputed, but historians agree that the terminology itself was first coined in a letter written by an unknown healer from the former Kingdom of Selona, now part of the Dauphinian Empire, in the year 452 of the Modern Era…

The rest of the paragraph was equally dry, and it became a blur as her attention wandered back to last night.

She flexed her fingers at the memory of grasping Alain’s hand.

Her face warmed as she recalled how, instead of pushing her away, he’d laced his fingers with hers until the final applause.

A pleasant chill ran through her as she remembered him asking about her romantic interests, and how he’d understood her answer in the way few others had.

And then there had been that brief moment, after walking her to her front door, when she’d thought he would kiss her—and the disappointment she’d felt when he hadn’t.

And why did you expect anything else?

Of course he hadn’t. The man cared about following protocols and upholding decorum.

Yet, between that moment last night and the look she’d seen in his eyes on the night of his resurrection, there was a part of him that didn’t care about those things.

As for whether he would allow that part of himself to take the lead…

Mavery looked up from the book and let loose a groan that echoed through the room. Somewhere in the distance, a voice responded with an indignant, “Shh!”

She was here to learn everything she could about Sensing. Yet, her eyes had scanned the opening paragraph at least three times, and she hadn’t absorbed a single word. She pushed aside the less important thoughts—she could revisit those later—and forced herself to focus on reading.

As Kazamin had once said, some wizards viewed Sensing as pseudoscience.

The wizard who had penned this book was among that crowd: his thesis was that all arcane hypersensitivity research was based on flawed methods.

He would spend the next five hundred pages defending that claim.

A waste of good paper, in Mavery’s opinion.

Not bothering to finish the introductory chapter, she set the book aside.

The rest of the books proved equally unhelpful.

If they didn’t seek to debunk Sensing’s existence, they sought to trivialize its usefulness or overstate its dangers.

While Mavery didn’t love the side effects of her condition, she had never felt they were life-threatening, as some of these scholars implied.

One scholar even argued that Sensers were possessed by demons, his primary evidence being a small sect of Sensers who claimed to communicate with them.

Mavery was tempted to toss that particular book out the window.

By the time Tristan returned, the only thing she’d learned was that the wizarding community had little use for people like her. On a positive note, she was all the more motivated to help Alain finish his Sensing spell—and prove several generations of bastards wrong.

“All of Enodus the Second’s books are housed at the University of North Fenutia, as none of them were ever translated into Osperlandish,” Tristan said. “As for Deventhal the Fifth, the entirety of his oeuvre is on alchemy.”

Mavery frowned. Alain had failed to mention that Deventhal had been an alchemist.

“He never wrote a single book about Sensing?” she asked.

“No, but I did find his autobiography. Perhaps you’ll find something useful in here.”

Tristan handed her a book that was surprisingly thin, as Mavery had expected a wizard to be exceptionally verbose when it came to writing about himself.

She skimmed the first chapter, in which Deventhal recounted his early childhood.

Her breath hitched upon finding a reference to Sensing on the second page, but her hopes were quickly dashed.

In the spring of my fourth year, I developed a condition known as arcane hypersensitivity. My lifelong curse inflicted upon me great discomfort when casting even the simplest of spells. Thus became my primary motivation for dedicating my life to the study of alchemy, as opposed to spellcraft.

“Shall I take this down to the circulation desk for you?” Tristan asked.

“No, thanks.” With a sigh, she handed back the book. “I doubt Deventhal will be much help.”

“Then can I assist you with anything else?”

“Actually, yes, there’s one more thing.”

Mavery retrieved a scrap of paper from her pocket. Upon it, she’d written the strange phrase she’d seen in Enodus’s spell tome: ktonic magic. Tristan took it from her and stiffened.

“Do you have any books on this?” she asked.

“No,” he said curtly.

“Because they’re already lent out?”

“Because that word is nonsense.”

“Are you sure? You didn’t even look—”

“Miss, I have served as the University’s Head Arcanist for twenty-seven years. If such a thing existed, I would know of it.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you doubting my expertise?”

Mavery blinked at him. “No, of course not. I was only thinking, I found this word in one of Enodus’s spell tomes—a transcription of it, anyway—so maybe it’s Old Fenutian or—”

“It is not. It is a transcription error, nothing more.” He straightened his posture, adjusted his robe. “Now, if you have no further questions, I have other patrons to attend to.”

Tristan turned on his heel and disappeared around the end of the row, leaving Mavery alone with the shelf of useless books. It wasn’t until his footsteps had faded completely, when she realized he’d taken the scrap of paper with him.

An hour later, after skimming through the remaining Sensing books, she exited the library empty-handed and with more questions than answers.

Between the lack of information about her condition and Tristan’s suddenly cold demeanor, she wasn’t sure which was more concerning.

As she crossed the quad, someone called out to her.

“Mavery! Wait a moment!”

She turned around, coming face-to-face with Nezima’s curly-haired assistant.

“You’re…Wren, was it?” Mavery asked.

“I sure am!” Wren gave her an enthusiastic two-handed handshake. “I was hoping to talk to you after Nezima’s class the other day, but you left early. Is now a good time?”

Wren beamed a wide, toothy smile. There was no trace of her nervousness from the other day.

No doubt a result of being away from Nezima—and Nezima’s paperwork.

A gust of wind sent Wren’s robe billowing behind her, revealing an ample bust and curvaceous hips that brought to mind a certain barmaid from half a lifetime ago…

Mavery blinked. Alain was one thing, but now this woman? She needed to get a hold of herself before she lost all her non-magical senses.

“Er, sure,” she said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“It’s about Aventus. You see, I was his assistant for about three years, up until last Fervidor.”

Mavery gave her a look of faint surprise, as if this were new information. Wren had resigned six months ago—a few months into Alain’s sabbatical, as Declan had implied.

“He has you working on Finisday?” Wren asked.

“No, I came here for my own research.”

“Oh, good. For a minute there, I was worried he was working you as much as he works himself.”

“I take it he’s always been that way.”

Wren laughed nervously, then frowned. “Aventus is very passionate about his work, I’ll give him that. But there’s passion, and then there’s obsession. Once he gets started on something, he’ll forget everything else, even his own wellbeing. Especially when it comes to the…er…”

She trailed off, then chewed her lip as she looked away. Mavery stepped to the side to remain within Wren’s line of sight.

“When it comes to what, Wren?” She crossed her arms. “You sought me out for a reason, so tell me.”